"In this barren age it is
extremely difficult for us to
realise...the vast emotional sources upon whichQuattro Cento men relied."Adrian Stokes, Quattro Cento, p. 51

"The true emblems of our age
appear over negativeto give the complete reassurance we require of art."Adrian Stokes, Quattro Cento, p. 42

"Object and subject are
irretrievable in motion,inapprehensible and unapprehending. In theflashes of identity between subject and object liesthe nature of genius. Any attempt to codify suchflashes is but an academic pastime."Jules Laforgue, "L'Impressionsme," 1883

From the beginning, Adrian Stokes'
description of 15th-century Italian art in The Quattro Cento: A Different Conception
of the Italian Renaissance (1932) was a determined effort to confront the
intellectual attitude of his critical contemporaries. The above quotations pulled from a
book ostensibly about the 15th century bespeak this moral commitment.

In his first book The Thread of
Ariadne (1926) Stokes had roughed out a working hypothesis for approaching the modern
predicament. The categories of traditional thoughtor what Stokes called
the "common heritage"1could no longer
be kept separate from each other if he were to adequately deal with the "overly
self-conscious" modern era and its contradictory relizations. Stokes proposed that
the understanding of meaning through contrast and difference become the new "first
essential."2
And this identity-in-differencea concept Stokes borrowed from F.H.
Bradleywould become animated through the "art of suggestion,"3
with its oscillation between opposites. This dialectical dance held the "keys of
understanding...the suggestion of meaning"